Her eyes go wide as soon as I start to push inside her. Fuck, she’s tight, her silky wet heat urging me on, squeezing my cock so hard it’s almost too much. But I can’t stop. I need to be inside her more than I need to take my next breath.

I draw back and press in, stretching her, filling her, branding every inch of her sweet cunt with my cock. Only when she’s stuffed with me, ready to burst, do I stop, buried inside her, and take her mouth again.

She tastes like spiced sugar, intoxicating and irresistible. I could kiss her forever, and I do, tangling my tongue with hers until she starts to move against me, until her legs twine with mine.

My ribs are protesting. I don’t give a fuck. Probably any position would be easier than being on top, but fuck that too. I’m about as civilized as a caveman right now.

Nuzzling her ear, holding myself still inside her, I give her the truth. “I’ve needed this since the night you handed me that ice cream.”

“Teo,” she whispers.

Hearing her use my childhood nickname tears a scab off my soul, exposing a wound I thought had long since healed. It hurts like hell, but beneath the pain is something better. Something that’s all Quinn.

As if she senses it, she frames my face with her hands, gazing into my eyes. “Baby,” she whispers. Soft and tender and generous: everything she is, and also all the reasons I’m an asshole for making her mine.

She deserves someone better. Too bad. I’m not giving her up, not now.

Pulling back a little, I fill her again. I’m determined to take it slow, not hammer her like I want to. Quinn might as well have been wearing a neon sign that said “Never been fucked.”

Virgins have never been my thing, but for her I’ll break all my usual rules. She’s moaning now, soft little cries that go straight to my cock. “Teo,” she says, and the pleading in her voice is unmistakable.

She wants more – exactly what I want to give her. But if I let go, if I don’t keep a tight grip on the reins, I might hurt her. And I’ll certainly break my promise to pull out. I’ll fill her with my seed, plant a baby in her belly.

Not that I mind the idea. Of all the women I’ve known, there was never one I could imagine having kids with ... not until Quinn. The image of her swollen with my child is hot as fuck.

“Teo, please.”

“We gotta go slow, sweetheart.”

“I’m all right.”

I kiss her neck. “I’m hanging on by a thread.”

One of her hands strokes down my back to cup my ass. “It’s … been a while?”

“Years.” It’s why I know I’m safe, though she didn’t even ask me.

“Honey,” she says, and there’s such gentle sorrow in her voice.

I lift my head to look at her. “You’re sad I haven’t been screwing every woman in sight?”

She presses a soft kiss to my lips. “I’m sad for whatever the reasons are that you’ve had to cut yourself off from every source of affection, comfort, support.”

Fuck. This woman. She’s killing me. “Quinn Callahan,” I say, and she kisses me again, and I speed up a little because I can’t hold back any longer.

We’re moving together now, her hips rising to meet me, the ancient rhythms taking over. I reach down to find her clit, and she covers my hand with hers. “That’s right,” I tell her. “You’re going to come on my cock.”

Her head goes back, her breath coming in short gasps. “Teo!”

“Come for me, Quinn.” I give her swollen tip a light pinch and she arches against me. “All the way, now. Let go.” My fingers circle and rub, and she cries out, her hips bucking wildly, driving her up onto my cock, her pussy clenching and releasing.

I hold still until she goes limp beneath me. A few more strokes, and my balls tighten, electricity traveling from my toes to the base of my spine. At the last second, I jerk free and paint her breasts and belly with my release.

She smiles at me like she just won the lottery.

* * *

After we clean up, she curls against my side under the sleeping bag. Her hand traces lazy circles on my chest, but I can feel the weight of her unspoken questions. “Ask,” I say.

“Ask what?”

“Whatever you want.” Since I’m planning on keeping her, it’s only fair she find out what she’s signed up for. “Wait. Hang on a sec.”

Grabbing my cell, I check the bars. Still nothing. That’s the only problem with this location; no one’s going to find us, but I can’t learn anything.

I’ll have to drive out of here sometime today until I find a signal. “All right. Go ahead.”

She starts with the obvious. “How did you come to be … doing what you’re doing? With Santiago.”

“I’m a cop. I went undercover two and a half years ago to get inside his organization.”

“That’s a long time,” she says quietly.

“Yeah.” She’s not wrong about how isolated I’ve been. It was by design, but even so I didn’t anticipate just how hard it would be.

“Did you volunteer?”

“Yeah.” I sigh and tuck her closer. “You know my family’s close.”

“Yes. I love that about them, even though I’m sure it has its moments.”

“Right. Growing up, my brother Brando and I were best friends with Lando and Romero. We were all the same age, two sets of twins, more like brothers than cousins.

“And then there was Gavriella.”

“Another cousin?” she says after a moment.

“Yeah. She was a year younger than the four of us. Tomboy, more interested in following us around than playing with dolls.”

“Did you let her?”

“Sometimes. We thought we were a bunch of little badasses, too cool to have a girl tagging along. But then we got a little older, and a little smarter, and started figuring out that girls were badasses too, in their own way.”

Quinn doesn’t say anything, just plants a kiss on my chest. It feels like acknowledgment and thanks and benediction all at once.

“Gavi and I talked a lot in high school. Dreams, goals, all of that. She wanted to be a science teacher.”

“What did you want?”

“Brando and I had pledged to join the military together after high school. And we did. We both made it into special forces training.”

She’s silent a moment. “And Gavriella?”

“The longer I was in, the further apart we got. There’s a lot that goes on that you can’t talk to anyone about. By the time I finally came home for good, I hadn’t had a serious conversation with her in years.”

“And you’d both changed.”

“Yeah. I’d gotten a lot harder. You have to, to survive. And Gavi …”

My voice trails off. This is even tougher than I thought it would be. Quinn reaches across me, finds my hand, and laces her fingers through mine.

“Nobody told me.”

“Told you what?”

“In her sophomore year of college, she was assaulted by a group of men. Gang raped.”

“Oh my god, Matteo.”

“The physical trauma was bad enough. But it wasn’t the worst part. Her parents, the whole family, did everything they could. Stood by her, got her counseling. But those men destroyed her sense of being strong, and whole, and safe in the world.

“She dropped out of school. Started drinking. Made the wrong kind of friends. They introduced her to stronger stuff.”

“Heroin?”

“And cocaine. Probably other shit, too. The girl I knew … she had to still be there, somewhere inside. But I couldn’t find her.”

Quinn goes up on her elbow and looks down at me. “Even if you’d been here …”

Trust her to get to the heart of the matter. “I know. Odds are low I would have been with her that night. But maybe, if I’d been there for her afterward, I could have helped her through it.”

She squeezes my hand but doesn’t speak.

“I joined the force, started working vice. But in my spare time, off the books, I worked Gavi’s case. There were suspects, but no proof. I tracked one of them down and got a DNA sample, matched it to the evidence.

“I went back to him and told him he could confess, or he could die.” Quinn sucks in a breath, but doesn’t interrupt. “He gave up the names of all his buddies who were with him that night.”

“Did you kill him?”

I look at her. There’s no condemnation in her clear blue eyes, just understanding. The knot in my chest that I hadn’t realized was there loosens a little.

“No. I wanted to. But I’d taken an oath to uphold the law, and I needed to be a man of my word.

“So I didn’t kill any of them. But sometimes the spirit of the law and the letter of the law part ways. I made their lives a living hell. Gave them a small taste of what they’d done to Gavi.”

“You couldn’t bring charges?”

“Gavi wouldn’t talk to me about it. Didn’t even want to see me. I think she was ashamed. I tried to tell her that nothing would ever change how I felt about her, but she wouldn’t listen.

“Her parents begged me not to charge those assholes. They said it would only dredge it all up again, and traumatize her further. I didn’t agree, but it wasn’t my call.”

“How terrible for all of you. Especially her, but everyone who loved her, too.” She drops another kiss on my chest. “And Santiago?”

“He was the one ultimately responsible for the drugs in her system. So when we had a chance to get a guy undercover with him, yeah, I volunteered. Better me than any of the married guys. And I wanted a shot at bringing him down.”

“But now he knows? Who you really are?”

“He knows I made off with one of the Callahan girls. Whether he knows more than that, I’m not sure yet. But it’s enough. He’ll consider it an unforgivable betrayal.”

“So what happens now?”

“I find out where he is and what he’s doing. If I’m lucky, he’s already been arrested. If not … I’ll figure out my next steps.”

What I don’t tell her is that I’ll break every oath I’ve ever sworn to keep her safe. If Santiago escapes the justice system, he’ll answer to me.